LOCKER ROOM:Ted Walsh has no back doors, he speaks with a voice you could listen to forever and, I bet, birds land on his shoulders and sing, writes TOM HUMPHRIES

THIS CHARMING man! I’ve been to Cheltenham once and I’ve met Ted Walsh once. In fact it was in Cheltenham that I met Ted. I haven’t spent much time trying to get back to Cheltenham but I stalk Ted Walsh relentlessly. If I am to be stuck in a lift with anybody in this life I want it to be Ted Walsh. If I am suddenly and tragically orphaned I want to be adopted by Ted Walsh. If science ever progresses to the point where we can have personality refits, well I want to be Ted Walsh. He is our Don Draper.

Ted Walsh has no back doors. I have so many and they are so near to the front door that basically I am just a set of revolving doors. I want my doors the Ted way. Ted speaks with a voice you could listen to forever. When I was eight we moved back from England and I had an accent like a cockney because, basically, I was one. For self-preservation I learned in the space of an evening to speak like a hard chaw from Fair City. Storeee, bud? When it all calmed down I was lumbered with an unbearable mongrel accent which has been described to me as lawdy-daw Dub. I want to speak like Ted Walsh.

I want little birds to land on my shoulders and sing. I bet that happens to Ted all the time. As for horses? Horses hate me. I mean they have it in for me. They screw me over every chance they get. I was standing in a field one amber evening with a man and a woman and their eight horses whom they were calling in from the other end of the field. I said, “Please don’t do that”, but the couple said “Ah you’ll love them”. I shook my head like the kid in The Exorcist.

When the horses were about 100 yards away they dipped their heads and stampeded toward us like bulls in Pamplona. We had to jump the gate. I am not one of life’s great gate jumpers but as the guest it was better that I save myself and leave my friends to die. So the other pair were left in peril as I hauled my endangered carcass over the rails. Once I’d flopped gallantly to the other side the horses slowed. “Wow, never saw them do that before,” said the woman. I want to be like Ted Walsh with the horses. Want them feeding out of my hand. Literally.

Give me an apple to hold out to a horse and it will decide it would prefer to eat my fingers. Typical scene: Don’t interview many horsey people for obvious reasons (it’s a war out there) but one type of incident recurs. Being shown around stables. Keeping wary distance from horses. Suddenly trainer’s face lights up.

“Come and meet this fella.” Trainer goes and exchanges eskimo kisses with beloved and apparently charming horse. The horse is so old and passive and serene he has a calming effect on every thoroughbred in the yard. He is a beloved family pet. Until I come to inspect him, that is. I stand innocent and beaming with the trainer between myself and the horse. The horse looks up from its happy nuzzling . . . Curls its upper lip into a snarl thought to be physically impossible and makes to bite me. (Stable hands think they actually hear the horse say the words “Hold me back, hold me back”). Trainer turns and looks at me as if I have the number of the beast on my forehead. At best the dastardly horse will wait until I stretch out my hand to gingerly rub its snout and then make a snap for my hand. The jittery thoroughbred in the next stall along will shout distinctly “G’orn my son, g’orn!” It’s not right, Ted.

A horse would rather lose a race than win it with my money riding on it. I have never ever won a single penny on horses and I know if I joined a consortium – one of those things like Friday night poker sessions I’ve always fancied doing – the horse we bought would either die or enter into ugly and unprecedented litigation against me. I want to be Ted Walsh. I want to talk to the horses. Get texts from them even.

(By the way, these sufferings at the hands of equines are nothing compared to those of my friend who back in our freelance days was sent to interview a blind show-jumper. Having witnessed the woman and her horse go impressively through their paces the interview began. My friend produced his tape recorder, a state of the art piece of gadgetry which had a microphone stemming like a mechanical flower from the machine. Testing, one, two, three. It was just then that the horse leaned over the shoulder of the blind show-jumper and bit the microphone right off. That would never happen to Ted Walsh. Never).

The world would be a better place if Ted dressed us all. When one of my daughters, usually in a state of visible distress, says to me “Mother of Jesus, dad, what do you look like?” I explain that I am between looks, a work in progress, a man caught in transition. Ted has a look which is eternal. It matters not to Ted whether the rest of us are wearing our kacks with a large flare next spring or if desert boots and dufflecoats and cheesecloth shirts are making a comeback. I imagine that Ted still enjoys the scent of a bit of shoe polish in the mornings. I want to dress like Ted.

And I love where Ted stands with the Brits (his brief denunciation of John McCririck during the week had me saluting him, yet again). For Ted none of this aping the Brits stuff which became a popular form of national self-validation in the years of plenty. As a result the Brits don’t quite get Ted, but they recognise that they are dealing with a more charming and more intelligent species when they deal with Ted.

This is the relationship we Irish should have with the world. We should have the ability to respond to almost everything with a fine anecdote. Self-deprecating but telling for those on the ball. The world would be a better place if we all followed the Tao of Ted in times of crises and decided, as with McCririck, not to waste our senses on fools. Sue me if I am wrong but I’ll bet Ted hasn’t wasted a minute fretting over the Glenda v Rosanna feud.

These are some of the reasons why Ted Walsh should be the next President of this septic isle.

The Walsh clan are what this island is about. If you heard them with Marion Finucane on Saturday you’d have cheered. The Áras doesn’t need another lawyer. God knows, the world doesn’t need another lawyer in it. The Áras needs the Walsh dynasty. Just hand over a couple of hundred acres of the Park for training the horses and let Ted get on with life as usual, but have him introduced everywhere as the President of Ireland.

That would be a country you’d want to come and visit, wouldn’t it?